As a whole, I’d say this
was one of calmer nights of the G1 Climax. There was really no standout match
(none of the tournament matches were able to reach ****), but all five matches
were all pretty good. No match was lower than ***1/4, but nothing surpassed
***3/4. The best of those matches was easily Togi Makabe vs. Tetsuya Naito. A
very good back & forth match between those two. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Bad
Luck Fale was also very good, but I’d say it was just below Makabe vs. Naito.
The Main Event of this show, Tanahashi vs. Yano, was actually really good. I’d
say it was definitely better than their match at Dominion 2015. It was just a really entertaining match from start
to finish. We then had two more tournament matches that, while they weren’t as
good as the others that night, were still relatively solid. One of those was a
Bullet Club vs. Bullet Club match with AJ Styles vs. Doc Gallows. I’m always a
little weary of these battles between stable members, but this was actually a
lot better than I was expecting. I really enjoyed that match. It’s no surprise
that AJ Styles got that good of a match out of Doc Gallows. Then we had the
opening tournament match of the night, Kota Ibushi vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, which
was a solid match, and just a unique encounter in general. That’s the beauty of
the G1 Climax. You get a tone of different singles matches involving guys who
might not normally face off with one another.

Much like Night 9, this was
a very consistent show. The difference with this particular show compared to
Night 9, however, was that the matches were much more consistent. We started
off with Michael Elgin taking on Yujiro Takahashi. Honestly. I thought this was
Yujiro’s best match of the entire tournament, and it should be no surprise that
it was against #BIGMIKE. I just think this shows how good Elgin has been
throughout this tournament. We then had Kojima vs. Honma, which was very good,
but just shy of being great. Once again, Honma failed to get his first G1
victory. The award for the best match of the night easily goes to Tomohiro
Ishii vs. Yuji Nagata. A fantastic hard-hitting match between these two, as you
would expect. Ishii was as great as he always is, and Nagata was awesome as
well (he’s another guy, like Kojima, who’s still manages to be consistently
good, despite his age). Then we had Okada taking on Karl Anderson, which ended
up being a very good match. The action was solid, we saw some good counters,
and it was just entertaining to watch. We then had the Main Event, which was
the third singles encounter in 2015 between Goto & Nakamura. While it
wasn’t as great as their matches at Wrestling
Dontaku 2015 or Dominion 2015,
this was still a very good match. The finish was very different, as Nakamura
countered a clothesline from Goto into an arm bar for the submission victory
(which was actually a very cool finish). This win was particularly big for
Nakamura, as it would lead to him getting another shot at the IWGP
Intercontinental Title later that year.